


Golden Tresses

by telemachus



Series: Rising-verse [54]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Longing, Reunion, Sailing To Valinor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-13 18:28:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5712616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telemachus/pseuds/telemachus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Celeborn sails West, with his grandsons, and wonders what he will find when he gets there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Golden Tresses

Coming into shore, I only have eyes for the land – for the waiting elves – for – I convince myself I can see – a particular golden hair.

Surely.

Surely she will be there – she will know who is on this boat. Our grandsons, last of her house.

I would know if she were approaching, I know I would, always have, always will – and I have not her powers.

Of course, in this new life, I do not know what powers she has – what power her ring has retained, but – we are married, vowed, have been for so long that in the way of elves so joined by years we have an awareness of each other.

In all honesty, I think I was always aware of her. Since the first time I saw her, when I stood, gazing, as though enchanted, at this vision from a tale of perfection. So she seemed to me – so she still seems, has always seemed. I do not know what others see when they look at her – beauty, I daresay, elves being elves, but also – more power, more intelligence, more determination than some are comfortable seeing housed in the body of a female.

To me though – she was, has always been, perfection. 

Before we met I was – what – another noble elf. Skilled enough with sword, with words, with music and with comb, but – one of many. Only once we met, once I became hers, and she mine, did I learn who I could be – who we could be together. For her, it was, I think, a revelation that we could live in such harmony – not a harmonic family, hers – that discussions could be peaceful and affectionate, not a raging battle of words and wills. For me – it was all I ever hoped, and then more, when she inspired me, persuaded is the word others use, showed me that together, together we could find our own way, our own land to rule.

And then so many years of happiness, our daughter born and raised, and married – her children – such a joy. Our life so perfect for so many years. 

I do not dwell on the less perfect moments, instead I glance over my travelling companions, seeing if they are prepared for what we will find on this shore.

There is some fuss going on – I have no idea what, and I find I do not much care. It is centred on the insufferable Erestor and his Balrog-slayer – funny to think that in a matter of, I suppose, moments, we will not be able to refer to him as the Balrog-slayer. After all, I imagine that the lords Ecthelion, Rog, and others – not to mention that old fraud, Mithrandir – will raise an eyebrow in amusement.

No, my lord Glorfindel, you will no longer be able to claim that superiority.

Perhaps you and your – Erestor – Erestor the insolent, Erestor the so-calm, Erestor the cunning – perhaps you had best hope for obscurity, rather than the notoriety I fear my son-in-law would prefer. 

Not one to accept others as they are, my son-in-law.

Our son-in-law.

Married to my little girl – our little girl. My dear little girl. 

Have had to remind myself so often how happy he made her – when he was at his most insufferable, full of pomposity, of forebodings – had to remind myself he made her so happy and that all that – all that was merely guilt and loneliness talking.

Somehow, I’ve found myself understanding that a lot better since they sailed, my wife and my daughter’s husband – found myself understanding poor little Elrond a lot better – found myself wishing that perhaps – I don’t know – perhaps we – I – could have been kinder. 

Seen all that desperate welcome to strangers for what it was – for loneliness, not a denial of his love, his care for her, simply an aching attempt to fill the void, the void where children grow, where a beloved wife is gone.

And who is to say which is the better way to fill that void?

Still.

For all that, for all the memories, and for all the fuss I can hear – and oh but elves love a drama, an occasion for gossip – for all that, were I to cease looking shorewards, cease looking for the love of my life, the only reason for any of all these years – were I to cease, which I most certainly do not – but were I to, I would be thinking of my boys, my grandsons, my sweet Celebrian’s boys. Are they bothered by all this – do they care – do they laugh or wince when they see their erstwhile tutors making such a performance, such an exhibition of themselves?

But I know those boys.

They care for little – that is their way of coping, I suppose – their way of staying sane when their family crumbled around them. Mother injured beyond all hope of recovery, gone years ago – father and grandmother walk away, leaving all behind without a second glance – even as their sister chose the path of Elros. And that they stayed to see her buried – they are good lads.

Very dutiful, very responsible. Take after their father for that, I’m afraid. My little girl – more like me – like her daughter – we love, and that is all we know, all sense gone, all else forgotten. Sindar, her mother used to say, and sigh, Sindar blood.

I stayed though, I stayed to be with them – even though everything in me told me to go with her, to go with my love, to be at her side, to sail with her, support her as she faced the Sea’s truth, to help her adapt to this new life, this life of – I suppose – little power, little influence. But she asked it of me, asked me to stay – she thought it best that the rings and their wearers depart together, thought it best that the boys stay to be with their sister, and so – thought it best that I stay with them. Thought it would reassure our little girl to know they were not alone, to know they would not be allowed to change their mind, to make a different choice.

So I stayed for my grandsons.

And – to my shame – what help have I been to them?

Stayed to keep an eye on them – that was the idea – that was the duty with which I was charged.

Stayed for her – because she wished it.

I heard the whispers – there are always whispers – see, he stays behind. Glad to be free. Made a mistake in his vowing, he did. 

Waiting for me to look around, comb another.

Waiting, watching.

Rumours of – well, all-sorts. Rumours of pretty elf-maids, no better than they ought to be – elves? I ask you – what sense in that? Rumours – and I wonder how they started, and what fool gave them credence – rumours of some kind of – Glorfindel-like friendship, shall we say, with – who knows – some one of my warriors.

Fools.

Fools, the elves – and the mortals, if there are any – who believe such things. Or not believing, pass them on in scandalous delight.

The mortals, almost, I can forgive. They have such a narrow, tiny view of the world, of how things are, and must be, of the courses of love – of the ways of male and female.

But elves – elves to think so?

Fools.

Know they nothing?

Apparently not.

That I drink, and am foolish myself, and clown, and – and act like a child whose nursemaid looks away, in these years I have been alone – they think, fools that they are, they think it is because I am free, relieved, joyous.

Fools.

Blind fools.

Do they not see?

It is because in drink, and in foolishness, and in all the things I have not done these many, many years – I seek to forget that I am alone. Alone as no elf – whatever they may like to claim, Thranduil – no elf likes to be, no elf is content, no elf is, whisper it, entirely sane.

When once we have loved and lost – we waver on the brink of madness – do we not, Feanor?

Lost can be lost to death, to disagreement, or to mere – circumstances.

Oh, it made sense, it made eminent sense to be apart – so she said – so I agreed. She needed to go – of course, of course she did – the end of an age, the end of the time of the rings – it was her time to Sail – and I did not disagree.

But to stay behind – in all the years – it was the hardest thing I ever had to do.

To stand and watch her ride away, knowing she would Sail – that I may never see her – for one cannot be sure, in this world of ours, one cannot really, truly, know all ends – and I wondered – what if – I do not know – something went wrong? What if I never saw my bright love again?

What would become of me without her?

Well, I think we know that now.

Without her – I am become a drunken, dissolute fool.

One can but hope she has not heard of it.

Or if she has, that she has understood – she always has understood before – it is not that I am not worthy – or not exactly – it is more that I – I love her, need her so.

I always did.

From the first moment I saw her, I loved her, I was tied to her.

That never changed.

In all the times of trouble, of hardship – and there were times when things went ill – I never stopped adoring her.

She makes me alive, she makes me real, she makes me – even now, after all the years – she makes me golden.

Angered, yes, over the years there were times I was angered – so was she – we had our arguments, rages, days and nights when neither of us could bear to look at the other – but still, throughout anything – war, despair, teething elfling – I adored her, and would have died for her without a second thought. And her for me.

Is that not what love is?

So now – now I ignore all the fuss, the commotion, the perfect rhetoric of one and the hopeless devoted stutterings of the other with which our Balrog-slayer – hah! – and his librarian entertain the massed elves – and I look for my beloved.

 

 

 

 

The ship lands, and I am first to step ashore.

My dear son-in-law has words to greet me, and I should be polite, I should listen and make response – I should greet my daughter, my only child, and I do, I do rejoice to see how well my little girl looks – but I have not the time, not the patience for either of them.

I have not the time, the patience to see that they find my boys, my dear boys.

I have not the time, the patience to see that all is well with these my elves who have followed me, stayed loyal so long, left their home and trees for me, and now sailed with me.

I have not the time, the patience for any of it.

What care I for any of them, what care I for anything in all the created world, save my beloved Galadriel?

Fool they call me.

What care I, so that she is here, and I am with her again, and all the days we were apart are forgotten as we look at each other, as words are not enough, will never be enough, as nothing but the touch of hand on ear, hand in hair, nothing but loving can ever be enough for me, for her, for us?

I am an elf – my heart rules me.

**Author's Note:**

> I am going with the convention that Celeborn is a Sindar of Doriath, some vague relation of Thingol, rather than the appealing (but less likely to be canon, as far as I can tell) idea that he is a Teleri of Alqualonde. Not that it makes much difference for this.


End file.
